Privacy and Activism in the Transgender Community

Transgender people are marginalized, facing specific privacy concerns and high risk of online and offline harassment, discrimination, and violence. They also benefit tremendously from technology. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 transgender people from 3 U.S. cities about their computer security and privacy experiences broadly construed. Participants frequently returned to themes of activism and prosocial behavior, such as protest organization, political speech, and role-modeling transgender identities, so we focus our analysis on these themes. We identify several prominent risk models related to visibility, luck, and identity that participants used to analyze their own risk profiles, often as distinct or extreme. These risk perceptions may heavily influence transgender people's defensive behaviors and self-efficacy, jeopardizing their ability to defend themselves or gain technology's benefits. We articulate design lessons emerging from these ideas, contrasting and relating them to lessons about other marginalized groups whenever possible.

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